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This happens often enough (at least in my neck of the woods) on Christmas and Easter that I’m not even surprised anymore. But I’m still un-fed. Why did we have two talks with virtually no mention of Christmas – no scriptures touching on prophecies, birth, life, second coming. The second of the two dealt with the atonement in a very general way as part of the sacrament. The first talk was from a less experienced speaker and had no real content.
I hate to burden our bishop, but I’m wondering if I should say something. If the choir hadn’t sung, we wouldn’t have even known it was Christmas.
Our sacrament meeting was one of the best I’ve seen in years. Narrator read from Luke 2 and Matthew and straight out of the New Testament with choir members singing beautiful Christmas hymns. Now…we have a sorry choir.. and I have no talent to help them so I don’t complain…but they recruited some help from college kids at home and it was an amazing choir. We have a professional violinist that played an amazing tune. It sounded wonderful. The bishop wrapped it up with a lovely message of a family in our community that lost family members in a car accident and the ward rallied to these nonmembers to give the 12 days of Christmas to them and help them know they are loved and bring the spirit of Christ into their home and they wrote a letter of thanks about it.
It was truly a wonderful and spiritual service.
I’m sorry you couldn’t join me in this service, Ann. It varies so greatly by people in the wards and what they have to offer to feed us. I’ve had plenty like you describe, and the feeling of unfed is so frustrating especially during a season where we are seeking God. It sucks.
I hope your next year is a reaction from this year and they do better…I think if you say something to your bishop it will help them be aware.
Merry Christmas.
Ours was actually quite good. Mainly music with a bit of readings to tie to songs together. We had some great musicians in our ward. If we would have just had a guitar in there also it would have been perfect. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
We had one this year. HoorayAfter two years without we finally had one. I have been attending an adjoining ward so I could have something. What is funny is reading Heber’s post, ours was super similar – nearly identical except for the college student add ins. Ann I so hear you though. I can’t figure out how a church that can create letters and policies about who marries whom and such can’t write a letter to all Bishops and state a mandatory Christmas and Easter Sacrament Meeting or even a full month of Christ when those holiday are on the calendar.
I have had similar experiences, Ann, but this year was not one of them. Ours started with a sister who told a very nice (although not personal) Christmas story followed by music from the Primary children and ward choir. Our Primary is small and our choir is a bit ragtag, but they both did great. The bishop concluded with a talk about Christ. And we sang my one of my favorite sacrament hymns, which fits so well with Christmas – Jesus Once of Humble Birth. I skipped Sunday School as usual, and taught the lesson in HP (I had volunteered to ensure it was a Christmas/Christ centered lesson). All in all not a bad three hours.
I’m sorry about and for your ward, Ann. I wouldn’t be afraid to say something to the bishop.
Our choir director is degreed in choral music. She manages to make our rag-tag choir sound amazing. Today, the primary sang, the YW sang, the choir sang. There wasn’t really anything but music.
It was definitely Christmas — a nice change.
Weird thing .. Meeting started out with a bishop counselor being released and another being called. Stake peeps were there to handle that. Stake peep who is in our ward, let the bishop know FROM THE PULPIT, that the bishop FAILED to acknowledge the stake presidency on the stand, and that was inappropriate. Kinda uncomfortable there as the Christmas spirit was crushed over leadership etiquette. Would’ve been a great time for the choir to sing’ “Let It Go”
amateurparent wrote:Stake peep who is in our ward, let the bishop know FROM THE PULPIT, that the bishop FAILED to acknowledge the stake presidency on the stand, and that was inappropriate. Kinda uncomfortable there as the Christmas spirit was crushed over leadership etiquette. Would’ve been a great time for the choir to sing’ “Let It Go”
😆 I love the public correction. haha…certainly could have easily been done in private…now the bishop is just gonna be taught to publicly correct you ward members, I’m sure.
We had a few congregational numbers and a couple of small ensembles (no ward choir here, grumble grumble) and it was more or less Christmas oriented. The bishop shared a really nice analogy about hiking through the Black Forest at night and how Jesus is the light of the world. Of course that somehow included a plug for indexing/family history but I just rolled my eyes a little 🙂 I think that
allour Sacrament meetings in December should be focused on Christmas, and Sunday School/3rd hour should be Christmas-focused as well, at least the Sunday before Christmas Day. I feel like having Jesus’ name in the name of our church and taking the sacrament every week has become kind of a cop-out for hardly focusing on the actual Savior Himself. The Mission Presidents (which is how they were introduced :clap: ) were our speakers, so I was a bit apprehensive – but the talks were excellent.We had lots of Christmas music.
Overall, a very good Christmas meeting.
We have always had a Christmas program of some sort in our ward. Yesterday, a couple from the ward spoke as did the Bishop. In between were three numbers from the choir, a number for the women in the choir, young women number and the primary singing. It was nice overall. Our ward is small and probably a third of the people attending were up in the choir seats. But it was a good day. I don’t get treating it as “just another Sunday” and while I’ve been in many different wards in my lifetime, I’ve never been in a ward that didn’t acknowledge Christmas via speakers AND musical numbers. It’s good (?) to know that my ward is an outlier, generally speaking. Good to know, but hard to experience. ((virtual hug))
After being given a topic assignment that was focused on a phrase in the Sacrament prayer, I took it upon myself to connect it to the spirit of Christmas. We had a musical number and sang Christmas songs. The other speaker did mention Christmas a bit. Last week was our program which was filled to the brim in Christmas.
Quote:It’s good (?) to know that my ward is an outlier, generally speaking.
Ann – I don’t think yours is an outlier. I was thrilled that my ward did do something. That hasn’t been our history. I have heard from others that they don’t have them either. I still think a letter from Salt Lake, encouraging a full Christmas focus would not be out of line.
Quote:I think that all our Sacrament meetings in December should be focused on Christmas, and Sunday School/3rd hour should be Christmas-focused as well, at least the Sunday before Christmas Day. I feel like having Jesus’ name in the name of our church and taking the sacrament every week has become kind of a cop-out for hardly focusing on the actual Savior Himself.
I am with you on this one Joni. Yesterday I a small cringe moment when our program began because they opened with Samuel the Lamanite, and I was afraid we were going to totally get stuck in Book of Mormon prophecy, but it didn’t. They jumped right over to Biblical from there.
Interesting. Every sacrament meeting that I’ve attended that’s right before (or on) Christmas took on the same format. The person in the ward with the best radio personality voice reads from a Luke 2 script and there are several pauses for the choir to sing a song that relates to where the pause occurred in the narrative. At the very end the BP stands up and gets in the last word. I’ve never seen a Christmas SM that consisted of talks.
:sick:
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